


Intimacy in Stillness

by cecilantro



Series: 100 Days Of Ficlets [22]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 07:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14038935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Yasha lets him lean and doesn’t push, she doesn’t need to.“You know we’re family.” She tells him offhandedly, not looking at him, but down the street into the distance, “Nothing will change that.”Molly feels like he's losing his grip.





	Intimacy in Stillness

**Author's Note:**

> YASHA CARES SO MUCH ABOUT THEM!!! SHE CARES SO MUCH ABOUT CALEB!!!  
> honestly everyone cares so much about caleb idiot fuckin wizard doesnt know shit i love him somuch

Mollymauk eyes Caleb as he increases his stride to fall into line beside Yasha and she turns a little to him, meets his eyes briefly and they both nod, silently returning to staring ahead of them. It’s not the first time today, and in the sewers, too, he had watched Yasha look from him, to Caleb, and rush over to the wizard. The second time, a long look to Caleb before rushing to Fjord’s aid, he could see the thoughts in her head like they were a posterboard,  
_Monster is far enough away to not threaten Caleb_ .  
He’d thought the same himself when he’d drawn his scimitar to fight, but the idea that Yasha cared for Caleb more than for him, or more than he did, it was an alien feeling of almost jealously. Hot, green, acrid, acid reflux it burned at him in a way reminiscent of Infernal, less familiar less pleasant throughout.  
  
There was a time in the short space that he had known Caleb that the wizard would choose to fall into step with Mollymauk, and Molly would talk and laugh and answer questions and watch the look in Caleb’s eyes, similar to when he looked at Nott, or Frumpkin, a sense of safety, like Molly was a blanket or net that Caleb could trust to catch him if he fell, a guard against the red-hot iron bars of his own mind, the world.  
Could have been wishful thinking, he supposes.  
Hurt boils behind the ceramic smile, he wonders if Nott has ever cried behind her mask and pretended she was okay, too.  
Yasha leans over a little to say something to Caleb, and he catches the briefest movement, Caleb glances at him and replies to her, Yasha’s fingers twitch in a signature Molly knows is her laugh, quiet, they go back to their amicable silence. Jester is talking to him on one side, suggesting where they might go next, and he smiles mechanically and nods, forces himself to look at her and she seems not to notice, her tail swishes excited behind her. Molly feels fingers on his tail, a gentle pull, Beau wants his attention and she must be working with Fjord, because he comes up on Jester’s other side to capture her attentions and Molly falls back to Beauregard.  
“You’re feelin’ neglected too, huh?”  
“You know we have no right.” Molly’s ceramic smile drops- in this, at least, he can be honest- and he replaces it with bitter, pained eyes, curved mouth like a knife point. It can barely be called a smile. Beau glares a little, he knows it’s not really meant for him, more for the feelings she has that she doesn’t like.  
“I know.” She says eventually, and looks from him to Yasha instead. “Don’t mean I don’t want it, though.”  
“Hey, how do you think I feel?” Molly laughs gently, bitter and elated at once, “I’m jealous of _both_ of them, that’s my family and my wizard.”  
Beau eyes him again, draws her eyes, drags them from Yasha’s cloaked shoulders to Molly’s face.  
“Worried they’re gonna replace you with each other.” She leans back, a little too smug, she knows she’s right on, overconfidence. Molly’s tail lashes.  
“That hurts, Beau.” He tells her, because he knows she won’t read that in him, too trained for lies.  
Beau tilts her head, her confidence evaporates.  
“Sorry.” She says, and, “Y’know, all goes t’ plan and you’ll be my family, too.”  
She grins, Jester-bright, and Molly can’t bring himself to break that in her, he smiles too and nods.  
“All goes to plan.” he says, and she rushes him to gather with Jester and Fjord like all of their problems have been solved.  
  
Caleb sits beside Yasha at the table, too, Molly’s so busy sweet talking that he nearly forgets how much it hurts. It takes a run-up to kicking him in the stomach, he looks around and is hit at full force. Yasha has a hand resting on Caleb’s shoulder, he seems calm, it’s a privilege that even Molly hasn’t had.  
Beau catches the lapel of Molly’s jacket and pulls.  
“Beau-”  
“Shut up.” She tells him, she drags, they stand at the edge of Caleb and Yasha’s table half-reluctant.  
“Company?” Yasha raises her eyebrows, there’s a reluctance to her, too. Molly slides in across from her, she leans across the table to him and he instinctively mimics her, takes her hands. Her thumbs brush his knuckles, still slightly bloodied from punching the rats earlier, he’s a delicate character in the fist fight sense.  
“Are you okay?” She asks him, low, and Molly sighs, he wants his walls to come down but Beau and Caleb are right there, so he blinks at her in a practiced and deliberate way as he replies,  
“Fine.”  
It’s generally code for _later_ , but Yasha frowns at him a little and presses her leg to Caleb’s under the table.  
“I need some air.” She tells him, “Molly’s coming too.”  
Caleb stands quickly, looks at her quizzically, she keeps her expression indifferent, distant, normal.  
She puts a hand to Caleb’s arm as Beau slides up to let Molly out along with her, Caleb’s eyes widen. Beau mimics Yasha to Molly, a hand to his arm, it’s uncharacteristic and she meets his eyes.  
He takes a moment.  
“You’re very annoying.” He tells her. She smiles broadly at him and lets him go, he stumbles after Yasha into the night air.  
They both lean against a wall and, after checking around them, Mollymauk drops his confident demeanour and leans into Yasha’s arm. He’s shaking a little, still smiling, he presses his face into the feathers of her cloak. She leans over with the other arm and sets a hand just under his horn, over Molly’s ear, he feels the tickle of her thumb as she brushes it to the base of the curl. Back and forth, a lullaby of sensation, he stays still and lets her work until he feels solid and personal enough to pull himself up. He loops his arm through hers, to replace the head on her shoulder.  
“Are you okay, Molly?” She asks him again, and this time, Molly shakes his head. Full disclosure, honesty, he sighs and she already understands, nobody knows him like Yasha does. In fact, she may know him better in ways than he knows himself.  
Yasha lets him lean and doesn’t push, she doesn’t need to.  
“You know we’re family.” She tells him offhandedly, not looking at him, but down the street into the distance, “Nothing will change that.”  
“He trusts you more than me.” He replies, soft, hurting, it’s a pulse. It aches.  
Yasha laughs a little,  
“You threatened him! He’s just hurting. Like you are, actually.” She holds her secrets, locked in on her tongue. She knows more, Molly can read it, but she says less and lets him ponder.  
“I didn’t threaten him.” He replies, it sounds childish, he never considered that Caleb cared for him enough that his stunt in the Tri-Spires would upset him. He treats Nott like he would someone far younger, Caleb like he would treat himself, he looks at it now and knows he didn’t understand him well enough to make the move like he did.  
“Oh.” Says Molly.  
“Yeah.” Yasha nods.  
“I need to talk to Caleb.” he turns away from her, she feels the warmth of his skin leave her arm and hums sadly as he moves away from her fast, taking a second to stare over his shoulder, “We’ll need this space.”  
“I’ll stay with Beau.” Yasha nods, follows him in, Molly moves to Caleb like wind through a forest, rustling and invisible. Caleb turns to him with a hand full of beer, something Beau has apparently bought for him. His eyes betray a little shock, he doesn’t meet Molly’s eyes, looks more in the direction of his horns. He hasn’t met Molly’s eyes since, well, before the Tri-Spires. The dull ache in Molly’s chest is back, he misses the blue-sky that he could sink into, he’d beg to have it back.  
Yasha motions to Beau to slide over and sits next to her, looks at Caleb pointedly, he stands and downs the rest of his drink.  
“Outside?” he asks Molly, who is speechless for the first time since Caleb met him. Molly nods and turns, he’s outside three paces ahead of Caleb, waits by the wall he leaned against with Yasha.  
He had words prepared, a speech, something emotional, maybe a lie a tale a twist-turning ribbon he could bind Caleb with, make him pretty.  
He sees the tired, somewhat grubby face of a man who can’t meet his eyes, and that disappears on his tongue.  
He leans in, Caleb jumps, Molly stops.  
“I- I, Caleb, can I hug you?”  
Molly’s arms are already half outstretched, he trembles like someone holding themself together by tension alone.  
Caleb meets his eyes.  
Collision, Caleb throws himself into Molly’s arms and it’s crushing, he’s crushing, the click of spine and ribs as Caleb tightens his arms painfully around Molly, and the tiefling buries the fingers of one hand into the hair at the back of Caleb’s neck, his other lies as close and flat to Caleb’s back as possible. Caleb noses his way into tucking his face against the crook of Molly’s neck and stays still, breathing slow and deep, Molly feels the hot-cold of each breath he takes.  
Mollymauk still smells faintly of the scented bathwater from earlier in the day, and of lavender, like his skin, Caleb knows he carries a tiny bottle of lavender oil to daub like perfume.  
“Gods,” Molly hears Caleb say roughly into his neck, “Don’t let go.” a sudden shock of silence when Caleb realises what he’s said and it swells in his throat, he fights for moments before it breaks and he can’t, “Don’t ever let go, please, don’t.” and he’s sobbing.  
Molly tips his head down and finds a place mirrored on Caleb’s neck to his, the same place he feels Caleb’s nose brushing, he presses his lips to on the wizard. It’s all he can do, he’s trembling too hard, he doesn’t want to let go and at the same time he needs to see Caleb. He needs to inspect, personally, each and every wound of the past week. To inspect, personally, the three most recent, from the ambush that was all Mollymauk’s fault.

He wonders if Caleb blames him for those.  
He wonders when he pressed his forehead to Caleb’s, when they pulled apart enough for that, he hears the broken gasps of his wizard and there’s such a cold, aching pain, like the heat-burn of hands coming in out the snow without gloves.  
The hand from Caleb’s back moves as he presses against the wall instead, shifts around to Caleb’s shirt and hovers at the bottom hem.  
“Can- the arrows, can I-?”  
Caleb is already nodding, it rubs him against Molly’s forehead, he feels the knock of skull against his horns, slides his hand into Caleb’s shirt.  
He ghosts over each wound, rubs a thumb against each set of stitches, something he knows Jester did whilst Caleb and the others were out.  
He knows this because he sat up awake the rest of the night with Caleb, hating himself, watching until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any more. Even then, he’d wrapped himself around Caleb, physically guarding, trusting only Jester to that knowledge. If she’d kept her tongue, nobody else would know.  
Caleb watches each bit of pain on Molly’s face, he already knows that he blames himself, they’d had that encounter when he’d woken up the next morning. He’d held Molly’s hand and thought about what could have happened to him without the alarm, he could have been killed and they would all have slept through.  
He’s hurt and horrified by the possibility, at the time it hadn’t occurred to him but it does now, Molly had _watched_ Caleb hit the floor like a lead weight, he had _watched_ him wrench, screaming, the three bolts from his body. He stands close, now, one hand still curled at the back of Caleb’s head, the other slid up his shirt, his palm over the healing wound on his shoulder. He shakes a little, his face turned down, Caleb reluctantly pulls one hand from around Molly to tilt his head up and confirm his suspicions that Molly is crying.  
There’s no words, nothing to be said, Caleb can think to do nothing other than pull Molly in with the hand still on his back and kiss, a fierce sort of gentle, he wants all and nothing at once. He tilts, shifts, hopes his movement and touch can communicate what he can’t make words to do.  
Molly kisses him back.  
An intimacy in stillness, they’re slow, and it’s a language of its own.  
They don’t pull back far, still close enough that their lips brush, reluctance to part.  
“Don’t let go.” Molly echoes Caleb’s earlier request and tilts, resting his forehead to Caleb’s and they stay still.  
“I don’t want to.” Caleb sighs in response, and they stay. It cannot last forever, and they know.  
They take what they can get.

**Author's Note:**

> imc ryign.


End file.
